Monkey Slam Review

Chillingo has a love affair with monkeys. First it was Chimpact and now they're heading back into the jungle with their latest release, Monkey Slam. Does this brick-breaking baboon inspired game make you want to swing through the Amazon? Or beat your chest and delete it?

You play as Monkey and Ape, a primate team who must break the bricks in each stage. Monkey Slam has 4 different worlds for you to explore -- Monkey Reef, Far East, Jungle island and Space World. Each world has 16 stages and your goal is to try and collect three stars on each stage. It's a very simple game with a very simple premise, but with it's own unique take on the genre to make it unique.

Monkey will bounce off of Ape's head. Slide Ape back and forth and bounce Monkey back up into the playfield until he has broken all of the bricks and you've cleared the stage. Fruit will drop from broken bricks and are worth points if Ape eats them. Eat too many and you'll get a nice rewarding belch. Power-ups are also available, these range from Big Ape to Flipside to having three monkies on screen at once.

It's a bit tricky trying to bounce Monkey off of the leaf on Ape's head. Because Ape takes up so much of the screen, you have less real estate on the bottom than other brick-breaking games. But other brick-breaking games don't have burping monkeys so it all evens out. Earn bananas as you play. You can fling bananas at bricks to help monkey out, but you only have a limited number of them. Bombs will occasionally appear and if you tap on them, they'll explode and blow up any bricks within their vicinity.

I really liked the look of Monkey Slam. Everything from the falling fruit to how Monkey looks as he's flying around on the stage will have you smiling. The colors really pop and the 3D animations on some levels are really cool. The sound effects are great, especially when Monkey hits a lot of bricks and some explode, dropping fruit all over the screen. The score is pleasant as well but doesn't seem to change with different worlds.

Monkey Slam is a neat little break bricking game that kids will like but adults might get bored with. I will say it's worth playing for a while just to check out the later worlds and their fun and crazy stages. Look at that, I did the entire review without a single primate pun! I'm chimply marvellous!